Iowa transit feeds and the NTD shapes.txt requirement.

What the requirement says

FTA's July 2025 final notice makes shapes.txt part of the GTFS that NTD reporters with fixed-route service publish: Full Reporters from Report Year 2025, and Reduced, Rural, and Tribal Reporters from Report Year 2026. The same notice makes agency_id a required field from Report Year 2025, where it had been required only when a feed names several agencies. This page does not say which reporter type a feed belongs to, and filing dates are FTA's to set: check your reporter type in your own NTD filing and the due date in FTA's NTD reporting calendar. See the shapes.txt explainer for the rule and its sources.

Tracked Iowa feeds

FTA's notice describes shapes.txt as a file for each route. The shapes.txt column counts something simpler and stricter: whether every trip in trips.txt carries a shape_id that matches a path in shapes.txt. The agency_id column reads agency.txt only; the notice also names routes.txt and fare_attributes.txt. Each row reflects the feed's most recent scoring run. Absence from this list means a feed is not tracked here, not that it is out of compliance.

If your feed is on the list

Ask whoever builds your GTFS export for shapes.txt with trips.shape_id set to match, republish, and the next completed scoring run re-checks the feed. Two validator notices commonly follow new shapes: unused_shape and stop_too_far_from_shape.

Not tracked here? Paste your feed's URL to grade it in about a minute, or run the pre-publish check on an export you have not published yet; that one reads the zip in your browser and uploads nothing.